


together we're unlimited

by mistyheartrbs



Category: Glee
Genre: Duet, F/F, Season/Series 01, gay people...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29357400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistyheartrbs/pseuds/mistyheartrbs
Summary: Rachel and Quinn practice a duet, one afternoon.
Relationships: Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray
Comments: 11
Kudos: 62





	together we're unlimited

**Author's Note:**

> rachel's lamps deserve their own spinoff series. why does she have so many

They’re practicing for some inane assignment - Quinn doesn’t actually think that club advisors can give out homework, like, legally, but she’s good at picking her battles - and she’s been paired up with Rachel and it’s not…it’s not the _worst_ thing in the world.

Because Rachel is objectively a good singer, so it’ll be easier for both of them to do well. 

Quinn thinks all of this during the minute or so that Rachel is fussing around downstairs with the snacks, and during that minute she takes stock of the room’s content. Perfectly preserved Playbills. At least seven lamps. A tiny little rainbow flag hanging out of a bucket. 

So, basically what anyone would expect from Rachel Berry’s room. Quinn wonders about the flag for about three seconds before remembering the two men who’d greeted her with smiles at the door, how they’d been holding hands even as they let her into the house. Anyone would have something important to their parents in their room if their parents were as nice as Rachel’s dads. Of course. 

She’d ask about the lamps, though. There wasn’t any explanation for those. 

***

Rachel returned to the bedroom with a platter of cheese and crackers in her hands and her heart thumping like she’d just run a marathon. Quinn sat on her bed, exactly where she’d left her, and Rachel glanced around for a moment before setting the platter on the floor.

“Sorry I don’t have a coffee table or anything,” she said, sitting down on the floor, because sitting _next to Quinn Fabray_ on her _bed_ was a little much for a simple assignment. And she had better access to the snack platter this way anyhow. “I’d use my desk but it’s where I keep most of my schoolwork.”

“What song’re we doing?” Quinn asked, instead of acknowledging anything Rachel had just said, at _all._ It rankled her. “It’s supposed to be something that tells a story, right?”

“I’m glad you asked!” Rachel started to thumb through her CDs, each of them alphabetized and then organized further by genre. “I thought that a showtune might work well for this one, since musicals are stories themselves, and there are lots of duets at our behest…”

Quinn snorted. Rachel turned around, sharply.

“What?”

 _“Behest._ It’s just not something you hear teenagers say, is it?” Sometime in the handful of seconds Rachel had been looking the other way, Quinn had settled onto her stomach, and was now reaching over for one of the saltines. Rachel could see her collarbone. She didn’t want to think about Quinn’s collarbone.

“Do these work?” Rachel smacked the CDs down on the bed, careful to let them land on the softest part of the bedding. No use cracking them. Quinn glanced over the titles briefly before looking up at Rachel with a tiny little smirk.

“Sure,” she said. Rachel exhaled, long and slow. 

“Great. Well, then. We should practice. I will, obviously, play the role of the misunderstood but undeniably talented prodigy, while you’ll be the…other one.” 

“Hm.” Quinn took another saltine. 

“I should mention that those are probably a little expired.”

“And how can something be ‘a little’ expired?”

“My two gay dads don’t always check the expiration dates when they’re out grocery shopping by themselves, and now that I have the Glee Club on top of everything else to contend with, that’s most of the time.” 

“You can just call them your dads, you know.” Quinn bristled, clawing the blanket into her fist. “The…the other part is implied.” Rachel had never entirely understood that saying, about blood running cold. Hers always got warm when she was uncomfortable.

“They’re my dads. I can call them what I want to.” Rachel paused. “You’re not homophobic, are y-”

“No!” Quinn sat up. It had to be all that Cheerios practice, the way she was able to just put herself upright like that. No effort at all. Nothing she ever did seemed to have a single ounce of effort in it, which was of course how Rachel knew that Quinn tried very, very hard. It was easy for people to assume that she, Rachel, had been popped fresh out of the womb with a set of killer pipes, but the fact was that she practiced whenever she could, as much as she could. “No, I’m not _homophobic,_ Rachel. You don’t have to jump down my throat like that.” She glanced to the side again, then, just for a moment. Rachel didn’t have a chance to notice what she was looking at. 

“Well. I’m glad to hear it, because otherwise I would have had to remove you from the premises, and we would’ve both failed the assignment.”

“I don’t think Mr. Schue is actually allowed to give out grades.”

“It’s the principle of the thing, Quinn,” Rachel said. “We would have failed in the eyes of our _peers,_ and that’s worse.” 

“Not when you’re trying for scholarships.” Quinn’s gaze grew cloudy, distant. Rachel settled onto the bed. “I want out, Rachel. Of this town.”

“So do I. Broadway isn’t exactly going to pack its bags and trot on over to Ohio, is it? I can hear the lights calling my name.” 

“I don’t care where I go. Just as long as it’s not…like this, so _shitty_ and _repressed_ and _lonely.”_

“You’re not alone.” Rachel imagined that this was where she would tenderly stroke Quinn’s back, or something. If she was being entirely honest with herself she’d never had a female friend who’d confided in her this much. The closest thing she had to that was Ms. Pillsbury, and she was paid to do what she did. Instead, she just kind of sat there, looking her in the eye. “You have the entire Glee Club, and I’m sure Santana and Brittany would do anything to protect you.” This was absolutely truthful. Rachel was a little afraid of them both.

“You know that’s not what I mean.” Quinn looked away. 

“Then tell me.”

“I don’t think you’d understand.” 

“Try me. I’ve been told that I’m a very good listener.” Rachel sat up a little straighter, to complete the image, and then she waited.

***

Quinn wasn’t going to spill out all her problems here, now, to Rachel Berry while both of them were sitting _on Rachel Berry’s bed,_ because of course she wasn’t. But she also knew very well - first-hand - that Rachel was persistent. So she gave her what she could.

“Maintaining this image of what- _who_ I am, every day, it’s exhausting. All of you can only see me as one thing at a time. The cheerleader. The bully. The school tramp.” She returned Rachel’s unrelenting stare, then, grinned a little as if daring her to disagree. Maybe she was. _Oh, Quinn, you’re so much more than that! You contain multitudes!_ Or some other Whitman-like platitude regurgitated from Mr. Schue’s lesson plans. That was the most she’d get from Rachel.

Speaking in honest terms, as she could do in her mind and pretty much nowhere else, it was more than she deserved. 

“We’re the same.” Rachel said it in one breath. She said a lot of things in one breath. Quinn wondered if it was because people didn’t usually let her talk. “Both of us are trying to break out of our preconceived boxes in pursuit of something greater than ourselves and _definitely_ greater than our places at school. Right?”

“Something like that.” That was the most she’d get, Quinn decided. Again, no use telling Rachel things that she could just as easily use against her as soon as the need arose. And knowing Quinn as she knew herself, the need probably would arise eventually.

Quinn wasn’t a very nice person. She’d never denied this, or tried to change it. It just _was,_ the same way she had blonde hair and green eyes and anything else. So she knew that their paths wouldn’t always cross this way, so peacefully. 

It was just the nature of things. No use trying to change that.

“I can probably find a lyric video somewhere online,” Rachel said, after the silence had stretched on long enough. She flipped open her laptop, typed something into a search bar faster than Quinn could follow her fingers on the keys. “And there…we…go.” The video started, the text onscreen fuzzy but legible enough. They both sat in silence, just listening. 

“That works,” Quinn said, finally, after the video had ended. 

“Good. Because I was attached to that one.” Rachel pushed herself up off the bed, turned around to face Quinn again. Then she stared. Quinn’s face heated up, involuntarily.

“What?” she growled.

“You start it.” 

“I don’t think we need to do the dialogue.”

“It counts as part of the song. _Storytelling,_ remember?” Rachel dipped her head a little, like she was gesturing for some invisible audience. Quinn sighed and glanced at the lyrics again.

_“Dearest darlingest momsie and popsical…”_

*** 

Time passed, as it did. They managed to get the basics of the song down. Rachel’s computer died halfway through the afternoon, one of those inconvenient computer-deaths where it wouldn’t turn on even after she charged it for a while, so she took that as a sign to stop for the time being and waited for Quinn to leave, but she didn’t. 

“I brought my homework,” she said, hefting her bag for emphasis. No decorations on it, Rachel noticed. Nothing that would distinguish it from anyone else’s bag. “We’ll wait it out.”

“Okay,” Rachel said, looking out her window. The sun was starting to go down. What would happen when it was too dark outside to drive? She trusted Quinn enough to know that she wouldn’t be a terrible houseguest - if only because she seemed to like Rachel’s dads - but… 

Well, there were quite a lot of things she didn’t want to think about very much. 

“It’s not a bad song,” Quinn added. “What happens at the end?” 

“Hmm?”

“I haven’t seen that many musicals. What happens to the girls at the end of it?” 

“Really. You’ve been in the Glee Club for the better part of a _year_ and you haven’t even _tried_ to see any musicals? The local productions aren’t particularly good but sometimes they surprise you, and I’m pretty sure _Wicked_ ’s toured about an hour and a half away from here before…”

“I’d look up a plot summary if you hadn’t killed your computer,” Quinn drawled. “What happens to them?”

“Oh. Well, you’ve seen _The Wizard of Oz_ , right? It’s the story of before. So you know at the start, pretty much, that they’re not going to end it happily, since in _The Wizard of Oz_ they hate each other. In this version, it turns out they were just _pretending_ to hate each other, after they become friends. But Glinda - that’s you, in our performance - thinks that Elphie’s dead, at the end, because she faked her own death to escape. So they never see each other again.”

Quinn said nothing. 

“They sing another duet before that happens, though. It made me _cry_ the first time I listened to it if you can believe that, and I’ve seen enough performances in my lifetime that I’ve grown emotionally numb to all but the most impactful ones.”

“Huh,” Quinn finally said, already starting on her calculus homework, already scratching in numbers and equations in her sharp little handwriting. “Why didn’t we do that one?” 

“Too much context to explain. And I figured we could have more fun with the part where they actually _do_ hate each other.” Rachel briefly wondered what the others would do for the assignment. It didn’t matter that much. She knew the two of them would blow everyone else out of the water.

Then she wondered exactly when she’d started thinking of herself and Quinn as a unit and not two very very distinct individuals who’d never, _ever_ work together outside of school-mandated assignments. 

“You’re a natural at this,” Quinn said, never taking her eyes off the paper. It crinkled under the pressure of the pencil, rested on her leg as it was. Rachel didn’t know how to take the compliment. She so rarely did. 

“You know, I can get you a book or something to lean that on. So it doesn’t…” The pencil punctured through the paper and poked Quinn in the leg.

“Ow.”

“...do that.” Rachel stood up again, this time in pursuit of _a book or something,_ and the sudden motion made her head spin. Most of the books she kept on display were paperbacks; scripts she’d found via eBay auctions and flea markets, but her well-worn hardcover copy of _And Tango Makes Three_ would have to do for now. 

“Why the lamps?” Quinn asked. Rachel paused, the book pulled halfway out between _Falsettos_ and _Cats._

“Hm?”

“You have a window. I don’t know why you need eleven different lamps.” There was the tiniest hint of judgement in Quinn’s voice - there so often was - but smothering that was a genuine sense of curiosity. Rachel briefly wondered what Quinn’s room looked like. Then she decided that it was a useless thing to think about, because she would never see Quinn’s room, because what was the likelihood that the two of them would be paired up for an assignment like this again? They didn’t have any actual classes together, after all, or mutual friends.

She could lie. Easily. Five months of improv camp in the third grade had done her wonders in lying easily. But for whatever reason she didn’t. 

“You’ll think it’s stupid,” she muttered. 

“Probably.” Quinn shrugged. There was no reason at all for Rachel not to think this would immediately get back to Santana and Brittany, and through them, to the entire school.

“I like the idea of being in the spotlight.” There. She’d said it. “When I’m not at school, and can’t go to the auditorium, it’s nice just to shut everything else off and turn one of these on.” Rachel laughed to herself a little. “If you don’t have access, you make it yourself. Right?”

“Show me.” Quinn hadn’t moved from the bed. Rachel noticed a tiny dot from the pencil lead on her leg. Why didn’t she get _cold?_ It was November. Anyone else would’ve gotten cold. “It’s already dark out.” She looked out the window again, and sure enough, the navy-tinged night sky had descended upon the neighborhood without either of them noticing. Rachel sighed, turned off the overhead light, and stood in the center of the room, where the light of the lamps converged just enough to surround her in a warm glow.

“There,” she said, feeling very much like she’d just shown Quinn some secret birthmark nobody else knew about. She couldn’t see her in the dark. 

“Oh,” Quinn said, and she said nothing else. Rachel didn’t have much time to think about what she meant by that - there were so many meanings and intonations one could put behind a single _oh_ that it barely constituted consideration. She’d drive herself nuts thinking about that. 

“I’m turning the lights back on.” Rachel stepped out of view. She knew the terrain of the room well enough that she usually didn’t need to feel her way through it, but she stumbled on her own bag anyway, slamming a little ungracefully into the wall where the switch had always been. If Quinn heard the _thump,_ she didn’t comment on it, or at least she didn’t visibly react. But, again, relative darkness. 

Rachel couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief when she managed to find the light switch under her palm and flicked it upward. Quinn exhaled, too, though Rachel wasn’t entirely sure why.

 _She_ wasn’t the one who’d just laid herself figuratively bare for someone whose interactions with her had, hardly a year prior, never been anything anyone could consider _positive._

But things changed, Rachel figured, and she had to believe that Quinn wouldn’t say anything about this.

***

Quinn wasn’t saying anything because if she said anything then Rachel would _know,_ and she could not under _any_ circumstances allow that to happen. Exiled indefinitely from the Cheerios and heavily associated with the Glee Club as she was, she still had some cards to hold to her chest. Things she needed to keep out of everyone else’s sight until she could pack her bags and take a train away, _far_ away. From Rachel Berry and from Lima and from everything else. 

She refused to think about what’d happen if Rachel actually found out. Not her own reaction - that would probably be some cloying speech about acceptance, possibly accompanied by a performance of an Indigo Girls song - but the way that it would start to slip into their interactions, slip into Rachel’s perception of her, until she said something without realizing she’d said it and then everything would topple. 

But what were you supposed to say, to a girl glowing in a spotlight of her own making?

Quinn thought her policy of keeping her mouth shut was a pretty good one, all things considered.

“I have more in my bathroom,” Rachel said, to fill the silence. “Lamps. It’s a bit of a collection at this point. Most of them came from yard sales - there are so many things you can find at yard sales that you’d never find in a regular store.”

“Like your clothes?” Quinn wanted to bite back the words as soon as she said them.

“Yes, exactly,” Rachel said, without a hint of irony whatsoever. “Anyway. How’s the calc coming along?”

“It’s fine.” Quinn held up the paper for a moment without knowing why. They weren’t in the same class. She wasn’t sure at all what - if anything - Rachel’s math class had in common with the things she was learning. And her writing was tiny. “I’m mostly done with it.”

“Oh.” Rachel slowly made her way back to the bed, sat on the other end of it. The snack platter laid forgotten on the floor. Quinn didn’t think the Berrys had pets, but the sight of it made her uncomfortable nonetheless, and she picked it up and set it between the two of them. 

“Is your computer charged up yet?” 

“Probably not.” Rachel glared at the offending machine, the little green light on the charger still blinking and blinking. “It always gets like this.”

“I think we’ll do well.” Quinn surprised herself by actually believing it. “With the assignment? I think we can pull it off.”

“Of course we will.” Rachel straightened her back and smiled, self-assured, so very pleased with herself. Quinn wanted to make her feel like that. She wanted to stay here forever. She wanted to close the distance between them. 

She wanted so many things. She knew she probably would never get most of them. 

“And this was…fun.” Surprising, again, but still true. 

“Of course it was. Just because I’m disciplined and refuse to take anything less than utter perfection from both myself and those I surround myself with doesn’t mean I don’t know how to have a good time. If your character doesn’t believe the things you’re singing then it won’t sound any good, and if you don’t have the energy to tap into that?” Rachel shrugged with her entire body. “You’re as good as done.” 

“I think I’m always playing a character,” Quinn murmured, and she let her gaze cloud over again. It was easier, sometimes, to see the world like that. Fuzzy and blurred. Less clear-cut lines about who she could and couldn’t be. Rachel didn’t say anything (for once) - all she did was put a warm hand on Quinn’s thigh, let it stay there. 

No music or anything. Just the slight hum of a heater somewhere in the labyrinth of Rachel’s house and the wind outside. The inside of Quinn’s head had never felt so loud. 

“You should stay for dinner,” Rachel said, finally, but she didn’t move. Neither of them dared to. 

“Okay.” Quinn felt electric. She might crackle at any second. 

“I’ll tell them, then. So that there’s an extra place for you.” Still, no movement from either of them. Quinn turned her head toward Rachel, slowly, agonizingly slowly. Time was already slow enough as it was. She wanted to slow it down more. 

Rachel moved her hand, finally, and the loss of contact felt like she was being doused in cold water, but then her hand was on Quinn’s cheek and then… 

Then Quinn was a power surge, a blown fuse, and she was kissing Rachel Berry and Rachel Berry was kissing her and it lasted one second and no more. 

“We’ll use that,” Rachel murmured, as if in a daze. “That energy. And there’s no way we won’t do phenomenally tomorrow.” 

She stood up and shook herself a little bit. Quinn knew without saying anything that neither of them would talk about it again. At least not for several more years. At least not until they were both older and wiser and their high school memories had blurred into each other and this was one of a hundred thousand days of Glee Club and teen drama and everything else. 

But here they were, and Quinn’s heart still beat faster than it could have. 

***

They did, of course, put on a better show than anyone else in the club, by a _mile._

And Rachel knew exactly why.

**Author's Note:**

> this may be the second faberry fic i've written where the title comes from a wicked lyric. and it probably won't be the last!


End file.
